AUBURN HILLS
To serve and protect
Officer helps panicky woman who was lost after abduction
By MARK H. STOWERS Special to The Oakland Press

While watching for speeding motorists Jan. 29, Auburn Hills police Officer Jeramey Peters kept his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. A Ford Mustang bolted into the parking lot where he was waiting and blocked his squad car from leaving. Out of the ordinary had found him.

“A white female ran at my car,” Peters said. “I put my hand on my gun, but then I saw she was crying and upset.”

Several hours earlier and more than 80 miles away, Kerry Yahnka, 22, of Mason, near Lansing, had clocked out of work with thoughts of enjoying her 2-year-old son. But a woman hanging out in the parking lot asking for a ride to Flint abruptly changed that plan.

“She said she had a gun and that I was going to give her a ride to Flint,” Yahnka said.

The young mother didn’t know how to get there and called her manager at Burger King to try to alert her for help.

“The manager looked outside but didn’t think anything of it and gave me directions,” she said. “I’ve never been out of my area, and it took about two and a half hours to get there. It was pouring rain.”

The abductor took Yahnka’s cell phone and ran down the battery making calls. “I didn’t look at her. I had tears,” she said. “I stopped at a stop sign, and she ran out of the car. I started bawling.”

Scared, totally lost with no cash and a gas tank nearing empty, she found Interstate 75 and headed south, looking for any kind of help.

“I saw a sign for the Silverdome and thought there would be people there,” she said. “I didn’t stop till I found the police officer. I blocked him so he wouldn’t move.”

Officer Peters fulfilled his police duties and took the young woman back to the station and filed a report. He even called the Mason Police Department to inform officers there of the night’s events and faxed them his report.

“She was pretty hysterical and kept saying she wanted to see her son again,” Peters said.

Mason police say the suspect was taken into custody shortly afterward by law enforcement in Genesee County on a warrant related to another matter.

She has since been charged with kidnapping in Mason and awaits a court date on that matter.

As a third-generation law enforcement officer, Peters knew that sometimes he must go beyond the call of duty. Overhearing Yahnka’s frantic call to her parents describing the event and her now-empty tank — and wallet — Peters reached for his.

“She needed to get home. We don’t have a fund for things like this,” he said. “So I gave her $40 to get some gas and some food. I felt like it was the right thing to do, and I didn’t want to make her night any worse than it was.”

After witnessing firsthand the worst of human nature, Yahnka was now experiencing the best.

“I was pretty shocked,” she said. “For him to go and do something like that, I thought, ‘I’m gonna get home.’ ”

Auburn Hills Police Chief Doreen Olko explained that this type of action isn’t taught in police training.

“Officer Peters is a fine example of the attitude of our police officers,” Olko said. “He was confronted with a crime victim who was in a difficult position, but went the extra step to help her out. This woman just needed a little help to get herself home, and loaning her $40 out of his pocket to him was just an act of human kindness — treating people the way we would like to be treated. We are very proud of his actions and I think he demonstrates the quality of personnel we have.”

Olko added that one of the police department’s values is service.

“We value service as the foundation of this department: striving for excellence, using efficiency as our guide, emphasizing that the only service which we will not perform, is poor service,” she said.

Peters views his act of kindness as just something simple.

“You’ve got to make sacrifices. It’s just part of the job,” he said. “The guys at work were joking with me saying that I was out $40, but soon after, I got a check from Kerry’s parents, even though I wasn’t expecting or wanting to be paid back.”

With Peters’ monetary help and a turn-by-turn map, Yahnka reached home safe and sound about 2 a.m. — tired and scared but home with her son and assured that even though the world has its wretched members, there are those who rise above and go beyond what their jobs call for.